When Democratic candidate for Governor of Texas Wendy Davis suggested her opponent Greg Abbot was against interracial marriages I was sure she had hit bottom..
Here's what's at stake in this election. Vote today. #MyTexasVotes pic.twitter.com/PQ1bT0sijC
— Wendy Davis (@WendyDavisTexas) October 20, 2014
I was wrong! A few hours later her campaign sent out this press release:
Yes Texas, Wendy Davis believes if Greg Abbot is elected governor he will take away all of your B.O.B.s (battery operated boyfriends).
The article Ms Davis points to supports her charge about Abbot and interracial marriage and charges he would ban the sale of sex toys.
When asked the ridiculous question of how he would have handled interracial marriages50 years ago, Abbott responded:
“Right now, if there was a ban on interracial marriage, that’s already been ruled unconstitutional,” Abbott told the San Antonio Express-News editorial board. “And all I can do is deal with the issues that are before me … The job of an attorney general is to represent and defend in court the laws of their client, which is the state Legislature, unless and until a court strikes it down.”When Express-News’ Peggy Fikac told Abbott his answer was unclear, Abbott replied:
“Actually, the reason why you’re uncertain about it is because I didn’t answer the question. And I can’t go back and answer some hypothetical question like that.”The only thing to learn from this line of questioning is that unlike Eric Holder who has opposed in court legislation passed by Congress and signed by the President, Abbott believes in the more traditional obligations of an Attorney General which is to defend every bill passed by the legislature and signed by the executive. Which gets us to the B.O.B. part of Ms Davis' latest charge.
She found that charge in an article in the Texas Observer which said in part:
In 2008, Abbott chose to defend the state’s ban on the sale of sex toys, a case that emerged from the fallout of Lawrence v. Texas. Over the years, Abbott has deployed novel legal arguments against gay marriage. But this wasn’t a case about gay marriage, a subject that still animates sincere moral disagreements. This was a case about every American’s god-given right to buy dildos.The Attorney General's role is as lawyer for the state, as so he has to support in court the legislation passed by the legislature and signed by the governor. If he had not represented the state of Texas in the law suit he would have been just as wrong as Eric Holder when he refused to represent the U.S. Government in the suit against the Defense of Marriage Act.
At the time, anti-sex toy laws were widely understood to be unconstitutional, but Abbott suited up for battle. The state, his lieutenants argued with straight faces before the 5th Circuit, had an interest in “discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex and the pursuit of sexual gratification unrelated to procreation.” The state of Texas has a pressing interest, Abbott said, in discouraging you from masturbating or blowing your boyfriend [Those are the author's words not Abbott's] That was just six years ago.
For Davis to bring Abbot's opinion of dildos into a campaign is just a reflection of the desperation (from an election point of view) she feels.
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